With “Scatter My Ashes on Foreign Lands,” Amir H. Fallah’s largest solo museum exhibition is currently on display at MOCA Tucson. Exploring identity and the immigrant experience, his vibrant portraits of veiled subjects, botanical paintings examining classical Dutch work, and a new series of autobiographical pieces are included in the exhibition. Fallah was last featured on our site here.
“Portraits of veiled subjects capitalize on ambiguity to skillfully weave fact and fiction, while questioning how to create a portrait without representing the physicality of the sitter,” the museum says. “While the stories that surround his subjects are deeply personal and are told through the intimate possessions they hold most dear, his work addresses generational immigrant experiences of movement, trauma, and celebration. Fallah wryly incorporates Western art historical references into paintings formally rooted in the pattern-based visual language of Islamic Art. In doing so, his paintings possess a hybridity that reflects his own background as an Iranian-American immigrant straddling cultures.”
The exhibition runs through May 3. Find more on Fallah’s site and the museum’s page.
The paintings of Jean Paul Langlois blend memories of 1970s sci-fi and Westerns of his youth, while also exploring the artist’s connection to his own native and non-native roots. Within his Old West scenes, you may also see a character from “Planet of the Apes” or references to Saturday morning cartoons. His "Origin Stories" series, in particular, re-imagines "mundane family stories and re-interpreting them through a cinematic lens."
In his current show at Honor Fraser in Los Angeles, Kenny Scharf shares wild new works that include new mixed-media paintings, sculptures, assemblages, and more. “Optimistically Melting!” takes over the space through Nov. 16, and in it, viewers find an veteran artist who maintains his graffiti sensibilities yet constantly pushes his interests into new arenas.